This is not an endorsement, but I think the "Trump just likes tariffs"-take is missing the forest for the trees.

I think there's a p(=30%) chance that we are instead witnessing the first (albeit somewhat clumsy) phase of a deliberate strategy for controlled de-dollarization.

People will dismiss this as 5D-chessing Trump's economic ignorance, but I've been in or around this world (libertarian-populist fusionism) for over a decade, know many of the relevant thinkers and theories, and have a reasonable track record at interpreting the context clues.

I've had o1 summarize a steel-manned version of what I think might be going on (again, 70% chance I'm totally wrong / I'm right but they hit a political wall):

A steel-manned version of this strategy would argue something like the following:

1) Immediate Shock to the System (Tariffs)

- By imposing universal tariffs, the US intentionally undermines the stability of the dollar as a trade currency and signals that global partners can’t rely on “business as usual.”
- This short-term shock (“raising entropy”) is precisely the point: disruption forces other countries to reduce dollar holdings or consider alternative reserve arrangements, setting the stage for a monetary reset.

2) Controlled De-Dollarization & Fiscal Retrenchment

- Once international partners start pivoting away from the dollar, the US simultaneously slashes spending and raises tariffs to build fiscal resilience.
- This is meant to head off the classic “fiscal theory of the price level” risk—i.e., that ballooning debt would trigger an inflationary spiral when faith in Treasuries falters.
- By being the first mover, the US can control the pace of de-dollarization and mitigate the risk of a full-on default or hyperinflation event.

3) Future Phase: Capital Flow Controls

- Merely using tariffs might not be enough to pry the world away from entrenched dollar reliance, so the US steps up to more powerful levers: capital flow restrictions, transaction taxes, or “market access charges.”
- That further discourages foreign entities from holding US assets while bolstering domestic funding channels (or pushing the US to self-finance more of its debt).
- Though draconian, these measures accelerate the pivot to a new monetary arrangement by removing the implicit promise that foreigners can freely invest or transact in dollars.

4) Reset to a “Harder” Monetary Standard

- After orchestrating the initial storm, the US reveals a new, more disciplined monetary regime (for instance, a partial gold- or commodity-backed system) or at least a big Bretton Woods–style conference.
- The aim is to restore credibility by showing that, under the new rules, neither Congress nor the Fed can perpetually run deficits or inflate away debt.
- This new system, by design, makes it harder for the US to finance endless military adventures or large domestic deficits through reserve currency status—tying policymakers’ hands in the future.

5) Reindustrialization & Domestic Reset

- As the dollar eventually depreciates once its “exorbitant privilege” fades, US manufacturing becomes far more competitive internationally.
- Lower real wages and cheaper assets (in dollar terms) entice domestic investment in industrial capacity. Over time, that fosters a base of production and skilled labor that the US has struggled to retain in a dollar-dominant environment.
- Yes, US consumers face immediate pain through higher import costs and austerity, but the steel man argument says the country emerges with a more balanced external account and healthier industrial sector.

In short, the “positive spin” is that deliberate chaos now forestalls a worse forced collapse later, and that by preemptively engineering the demise of the dollar standard, the US can steer toward a monetary regime less prone to endless deficits or foreign entanglements—and ultimately emerge with a revitalized industrial base. The next key phase (if tariffs alone fail) would likely be direct controls on foreign capital flows, culminating in an overt reset to a “harder” standard meant to restore confidence post–de-dollarization.

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Me again: To reiterate, I'm not endorsing this strategy or even its internal coherence. This is just an educated guess at the underlying method to the madness, and a potential interpretive framework for understanding the admin's actions going forward (including things like dismantling USAID, etc).

https://x.com/hamandcheese/status/1886144860920373587

My 2023 forecast of what I consider the "default path" of AI going forward.

2024-2027: 2028 - 2031

This from @ByrneHobart also underlies my intuition that AI's impact on government will be more fragmenting than centralizing.

Mass production is giving way to mass differentiation, which undercuts the Coasian logic of a uniform regulatory state.
thediff.co/archive/data-p… @ByrneHobart I'm looking forward to the new Richard Langlois book which deals with these themes in the context of 20th century managerialism. As he notes, the second-best logic of vertically integrated managerialism already began unwinding in the 70s. amazon.com/Corporation-Tw…

Who's making the GPT-4 teddy bear that will talk with your infant child and teach them a 2nd language? Seems like such an obvious product. Furby is in for a massive upgrade. The camera in its head will recognize your child's face and send a push notification if it sees something strange. Parents will track learning progress, inject prompts and review transcripts through the app, all for a small monthly subscription.

To capitalize on AI without starting a company? Hold an index fund and buy property.

A productivity boom in goods and services should cause prices to drop and relative value to flow into scarce factors like real estate and commodities.

Starting a company will also get easier.

https://twitter.com/ten90nine/status/1600303131170332672

In any scenario where AI leads to super abundance it will be hard not to share in the wealth by accident. Monetary wealth would be a lot less relevant in general. Unless there's a middle-period where you need wealth to buttress the societal effects of sub-superintelligence.

The second-order implications of near-term AI have not been fully grokked by America’s political classes.

Here's what I think is coming:

secondbest.ca/p/before-the-f… Whatever you think of the Singularity, we know most people have a poor intuitive grasp of exponential trends.

But with Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT, no one can now deny that deep learning is capable of borderline magic.

It’s crazy to think it’s just getting started.

1) I've been meaning to explain...

Why I'm not (exactly) an Effective Altruist

So here we go.

[NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. MY METAETHICS MAY BE FAULTY, ETC.]

secondbest.ca/p/why-im-not-e… 2) EAs love to debate normative ethics.

But where do abstract moral concepts derive their motivational power?

What resources do we draw upon to know if or when to reject a vulgar utilitarian calculus?

And if those resources always existed, what's the theory for, exactly?

Re: SBF / FTX

Most criminals are not sociopaths. In fact, most have a conventional sense of right and wrong.

Crime is instead largely about situational psychology, and the availability of convenient excuses to "neutralize" the force of prevailing norms.

sweettalkconversation.com/2016/02/09/tec… Criminologists once thought that crime arose from deviant subcultures with inverted moral values. Yet try stealing from a gang member and see if they like it!

In reality, crime tends to arise in social settings that provide for self-serving excuses to bypass the usual norm.

Luxury wines are a trillion dollar a year industry, yet wine tasters can't distinguish between low and high quality wines in blind tastings, will rank wines higher based on the price or label, and have even been fooled with a bit of food coloring into thinking white wine is red. Many people know this and move on, or convince themselves that they're the exception. Yet if you're like me and are incapable of mental compartmentalization, awareness of the extent self-deception in the wine industry has profound practical and epistemological implications.

Stagnant or declining population growth => stagnant living standards:

https://twitter.com/DavidBeckworth/status/1545086596193652737

The Malthusian intuition is for more people to equal less per person. So how can a growing population grow *per-capita* living standards?

More people =
- more ideas
- more scale and agglomeration
- higher ROI for fixed capital investment
- potential dynamic efficiencies

Woah! Michael Cassidy is proposing a large marriage bonus that would have to be paid back if you divorced. Is that not incredibly based? Comes with a per-child stipend.

https://twitter.com/GuestCongress/status/1537437946478854144

A populist Republican running for Congress in Mississippi is proposing a large child allowance for married families in Mississippi. Welcome to 2022. Though not sure why younger kids get less and not the other way around.

I liked this Straussian take on @tylercowen and @danielgross's new book, Talent, but I think it's missing the forest for the trees.

Talent is actually a work of Austrian economics. Let me explain.

https://twitter.com/William_Blake/status/1527317608722182144

@tylercowen @danielgross The Austrian school is differentiated from other schools of economics by two related conceptual moves:
- the need to disaggregate reified objects like "the capital stock"
- and a focus on market processes rather than static equilibrium analysis

Is it just me or was Stefanie Kelton's recent Oddlots interview completely incoherent? She repeatedly sidesteps what MMT says to do about inflation and deficit reduction. Asked directly, she says we need to address the climate crisis with a job guarantee and 4 day work week. wut When pressed, she goes on a detour through the chartalist theory of money creation, but then admits its probably not politically realistic to have Congress manage the business cycle with tax increases. Yet we're going to optimally control inflation by adjusting the work week?

Devastating new results on the effects of state-funded pre-K programs.

In policy you rarely get stronger study designs than random assignment + multi-year longitudinal follow-up.

Yikes.

doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi… This study corroborates widely discussed 2018 findings that used random assignment in Tennessee's pre-K program.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Cool site that lets you search recent stock transactions by members of Congress.

app.capitoltrades.com It's interesting to see which Congress people are the most active in the stock market. I think these are trading volumes for the past 365 days.

I thought some of this DEI stuff was being exaggerated, but I was just at external management training that was beyond parody.

I recognized a dozen or more DC policy nonprofits with staff in attendance.

Embarrassing for my colleagues but sociologically enlightening nonetheless. I got booted after "speaking up and taking action" to explain why their claims to equity and inclusion were actually deeply exclusionary, alienating, and even classist for anyone leading a team that's genuinely diverse and not a bunch of progressive drones.

She's doubling down!

Tax credits 👏 aren't 👏 income.

Monthly CPS asks many questions about earnings *before taxes and deductions.* The "money income" question Rachidi refers to is likewise for earnings, Social Security, interest payments, etc. -- **not** advanced tax refunds.

https://twitter.com/AngelaRachidi/status/1478867316603506696

You pay taxes on "money income."

UI benefits are taxable as "money income," for ex. That's why they're counted as income in the official poverty measure (tho I think they're simulated for the monthly).

You don't count tax credits as "income" and census interviewers know that.

Skill in econ is neither a proxy for education or actual "skill." Being really skilled at Sumerian carpentry techniques could land you a gig at a museum or a job flipping hamburgers. It's all about what skills are actually in demand while being relatively scarce.

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1478843525345148930

"Being Tom Cruise" is a high skill job because there's only one Tom Cruise, and he sells a lot of movie tickets. Sure, he does his own stunts, but relative to other equally skilled stuntmen, that's not what explains his earnings premium.

I'm proud as a Canadian to not know the name of a single one of them!

https://twitter.com/SCC_eng/status/1460601045168574466

Did this guy get a little too handsy in college? His hair doo says "yes," but who knows or cares? No Canadian, that's for sure.

.@AEI's @AngelaRachidi unpacks some recent survey data and finds that the CTC expansion had no impact on work:

5% worked less, 5% worked more, +/- 2.5%

Encouraging results!

aei.org/poverty-studie… @AEI @AngelaRachidi 84% of households making less than $30,000 / year stated that the CTC was either somewhat or very important to meeting day-to-day expenses!

Though I disagree with Manchin on the CTC, I also strangely respect him for the cajones required to be the lone holdout on a reform that would reduce child poverty by 40% with the backing of the entire Democratic caucus (including Sinema: her issue is only with overall cost). Beyond his direct colleagues, extending the CTC expansion is also supported by most anti-poverty experts, a majority of major media outlets and commentators, and hundreds of academic economists. It reminds me of a parable @tylercowen once gave on Bayesianism in a class I had.